Re: [Marxism] "Dance of the Dialectic: Steps in Marx's Method"- Review

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

Bertell Ollman's "Dance of the Dialectic: Steps in Marx's Method," is a good
read.

Even those whom have grown tired of reading expositions on "dialectics" will
find several chapters fascinating. Chapter 12 - the last chapter in this
smartly written book is "Why does the Emperor Need the Yakuza: Prolegomenon
to a
Marxist Theory of the Japanese State." Rather then "expand" the Marxist
conception of the state, Professor Ollman clarifies the inner relations
between
seemingly "non state" bureaucratic structures in society that buttress -
provides
legitimacy, to the rule of capital.

It is the disclosure of the "inner relations of things" - in Chapter 12, the
crystallizes the Marxist conception of classes and make concrete the concept
of capitalist as personified capital or as Marx put matters "those regarded
as capitalists." (Vol. 2 Capital: the system of Credit Capital)

Those reared in a tradition of viewing the bureaucratic structures in society
apart from the inner connection and interactivity with a specific form of
property underlying reproduction are going to have something to think about.

Having set himself the task of exposition of dialectics on the basis of Marx
writings and his power of abstraction, Bertell properly warns the reader of
the difference between inquiry into "self movement" of things and exposition
of
that, which is under investigation. This is a "no holds barred" book designed
to take prisoners and free them from their mental chains. It was also fun to
read but not at first.

Chapter 1 - "The meaning of dialectics," is written as a monologue and not
dialogue. "Comrade" Bertell is well beyond questioning the process logic and
abstractions used by Marx and have in mind winning converts. It is the
winning of
converts that expresses the environment of the book and its form of
exposition.

The environment of the book is not simply its inner structure but the
conditions of this phase of the class struggle in which it was written and
Bertell's individual role as an educator facing an audience, conditioned by
this
environment. The audience he faces began maturing under conditions of the
defeat of
Soviet Power, which came on the heels of the ideological defeat of that
sector of the world proletariat facing sharp political antagonism with
bourgeois
property or what was called the battle between socialism and capitalism.
Professor Bertell is no friend of bourgeois ideology.

Those amongst us who have read a little Marx "know" that there are no "steps"
to dialectics and so does Professor Bertell. To raged against a schematic
presentation of dialectics - which Bertell does not do, is still not valid if
one
is engaging a group or mass without a sense of historical philosophy, much
less dialectics. "Dance of the Dialectic" is constructed in a manner to allow
the reader to dance with the material and this entail taking steps.

Mr. Bertell dons the persona of Mr. Bogangles (exposition) and moonwalks into
the subject. That is, he proceeds from an understanding of Marx applied
method and creates a series of steps - processes, by which one not familiar
with
this method can approach the process logic abstractly. Leaving Chapter 1 he
dances and never lets the subject matter leave the dance floor. Nor does he
lose
his partner.

Chapter 2 is "Social Relations as Subject Matter."

"Every factor that enters into Marx' study of capitalism is a 'definite
social relationship.' (pg. 25)

"The relation is the irreducible minimum of all units in Marx's conception of
social reality. This is really the nub of our difficulty in understanding
Marxism, whose subject matter is not simply society but society conceived of
'relationally.'  Capital, labor value, and commodity are all grasped as
relations,
containing in themselves, as integral elements of what they are, those parts
with which we tend to see them externally tied." (pg. 25)

"What is unusual in Marx's statement (referring to the introduction of the
Critique of Political Economy - me) is the special relation he posits between
categories and society. Instead of being simply a means for describing
capitalism (neutral vehicles to carry a partial story), these categories are
declared
to be "forms," "manifestations," and "aspects" of their own subject matter.
Or
as he says elsewhere in this introduction, the categories of bourgeois
society
'serve as the expression of its conditions and the comprehension of its own
organization' (1904, 300). That is to say they express the real condition
necessary for their application, but as meaningful, systematized, and
understood
conditions. This is not a matter in categories being limited in what they can
be
used to describe: the story itself is thought to be somehow part of the very
concepts with which it is told. This is evident from Marx's claim that "the
simplest economic category, say exchange-value, implies the existence of
population, population that is engaged in production within determined
relations: it
also implies the existence of certain types of family, class, or state, etc.
It can have no other existence except as an abstract one sided relation of an
already given concrete and living aggregate' (1904, 294)." (pg. 24)

OK, the conditions that create capital also are that which compels capital to
recreate that which created it, as the basis for its life cycle or
reproduction or continued existence. Gee . . . Mr. Bertell audience is a lot
smarter
than the ones I have faced.

The notes at the end of Chapter 2, as is the case in the entire book are well
worth reading. Given how the book is written one could read it backwards on
the basis of just the foot notes at the end of the chapters and abstract a
coherent concept of exposition and inquiry. This is what I did after reading
the
book as written. Start at page one please.

Chapter 3 and 4 - "The Philosophy of Internal Relations" and "In Defense of
the Philosophy of Internal Relations," presents and defends  . . . inner
relations of course. Not simply connection or interactivity based on external
collusion. Bertell shapes shift - morphs, from Mr. Bogangles to Muhammad Ali
(did
they not both 'dance?') and is very adamant about this subject.

"What's my name he" screams.

"Cassius Clay!"

"No. Inner connection - relations."

Chapter 5 - "Putting Dialectics to Work" was best summarized for this writer
in footnote 3.

"Other important dialectical movements are mediation, interpenetration of
polar opposites, negation of the negation, precondition and result, and unity
and
separation. Except for 'precondition and result' the main subject of the next
chapter, these movements will receive fuller treatment in my next book on
dialectics. For now it is sufficient to point out that the role abstraction
plays
in constructing and helping to make visible the movements of quantity/quality
change, metamorphosis, and contradiction applies equally to them." (pg. 112)

"A sequel, like 'Terminator' 2 and 3, and 'Die Hard,' 'Die Harder,' 'Die
Hardest., 'Still Dying' and 'Not Dead Yet?"

Chapter 5 is about the longest Chapter in the whole book. It is reasonable to
assume that the sequel - "Still Dancing the Dirty Dialectic," is going to
have something to do with the section, "The Solution Lies in the Process of
Abstraction, (pg 60) and "How Marx's Abstraction Differ (pg 63)."

Actually, Chapter 5 was most difficult for me because my understanding - the
Marxist concept came later, of alienation was based in the material reality
of
being a second generation autoworker. Alienation was never an abstraction as
such put a material relationship one engages at the point of material
mechanical processes. Bertell of course points out the old Greek philosopher
articulating "flow and change" as a river that no one can enter the exact
same spot
twice, while gracefully dancing around more philosophers than one can
coherently
say in rapid succession.

One who enters the conceptual flow of Marxist exposition - circa 1970, heavy
industry, might be justified in approaching the dialectic somewhat different.
However the process of abstraction tends to work in the same direction.
Footnote 3 in Chapter 5 put me at rest as I labored through the first 112
pages.

Chapter 6, "Studying History Backwards: A Neglected Feature of Marx's
Materialist Conception of History was written for me personally" and made the
book
extremely interesting. Tedious laboring was morphed into energetic work and
the
abstraction that is quantity/quality emerges are witnessed within
"preconditions" and "results" (which pass into one another and reveal
changing "shape" and
the acquiring of a new qualitative definition) as the first conceptual
contact point in the exposition of dialectics.

For my money, Chapter 6 and Chapter 9: "Why Dialectics? Why Now? Or How to
Study the Communist Future Inside the Capitalist Present," could be combined
into a stand alone small pamphlet championing the cause of the modern day
abolitionists, of which the communists are an important sector - its class
conscious
sector.

Reading the footnotes in Chapter 7: Dialectics as Inquiry and Exposition is
mandatory.

There is no resolution to the inner conflict between words and concepts
because the world changes in front of "the word."  Or rather, resolution is
continuous. Professor Ollman is aware of this which is why so much attention is
focused on the power of abstraction. The German term Wesen has no exact 
equivalent
in English and has been translated variously as "essence," "nature," "being"
and "entity."

The dialectic of meaning and then understanding is continually resolved on
the basis of abstraction. "Essence" for the masses entering the flow of
history
in 1900 is imbued with a mechanical form of logic as it exists in
relationship to 1990.  The "essence" of a thing embodied it being "phat" - fat. 
"Phat" is
the word for the concept of the structural layering of being or an entity in
an environment with a self contained structural layering under definite
conditions. The term originated in the music industry. It is no longer valid
- if it
was every valid, to insists one has to understand the unique words/terms Marx
deployed in his exposition. After all inquiry is different from exposition.

Interesting Ollman does not see or articulate a divergence between the "Young
Marx" and the "Old" - mature Marx. Nor does he recognize a Chinese Wall
existing between the conceptual frameworks of Engels and Marx.  Engels
himself made
it clear that Marx was the real genius. Marx "big" was simply bigger than
Engels "big." Engels was big and phat.

Marx's "Economic and Philosophic Manuscript of 1844" and his "Grundrisse"
(Notebook/Outline) are placed within their historical context and one can
witness
how inquiry and exposition merge with precondition and results - what Marx
actually choose to publish. After all Marx was a big boy and knew what he
wanted  to publish. The German comrade will object to calling "Grundrisse" a
"notebook" as belittling its intrinsic value to proletarian revolution. Well,
the
Notebook/outline is phat and discloses the inner relation between inquiry and
exposition.
The outline is different from the published exposition.

"Dancing" does have a great one liner on the devastating results of
repudiating the concept of "the dictatorship of the proletariat" and what
this meant
when the old parties of the Third International dropped the concept while
under
ideological assault by the militant bourgeoisie.

Chapter 8, 10 and 11 - "Marxism and Political Science: Prolegomenon to a
Debate on Marx's Method," "Critical Realism in Light of Marx's Process of
Abstraction," and  "Marx's Dialectical Method Is More Than Mode of
Exposition: A
Critique of Systematic Dialectic," respectively, is apparently designed to
prove
Professor Ollman a street fighter that found his way into a classroom.

"Prolegomenon?" - Why not "preliminary discussion of introductory essay" on
why you political scientist need to leave Marx thing - method, alone? Chapter
8 asks and deals with why a coherent school of "Marxists Political Science
has
not emerged in America?" You have to read this and the whole book for
yourself.

I would strongly argue that Ollman's treatment of dialectics is part of a
rising indigenousness American Marxism.

Ok, I also read his "How 2 Take an Exam . . . and Remake the World."

Here his exposition and articulation of class - as in working class, closely
mirrors that of many of us communists who cut our teeth in the turbulent 70s
and 80s. Here class is no dry definition by a conception of peoples based on
their relationship in a system of production, their relationship to property,
the size of their income and how they are compelled to behave as a group
based
on these attributes.

Needless to say the Critical Realists are taken to the mat, while a
passionate appeal is made to MS. Political Science.

Is the "Dance of the Dialectic" book owning - shelling out eighteen buck?

Yep.

This is a book that shall be read several times for process logic and not as
an environmentalist critique or key to the strategic march of a section of
the
proletariat in combat with the state.

If you find in the course of reading this book that Bertell's is standing on
one of your feet, perhaps it is because you put your foot under his.  Not a
bad
read.

Melvin P.

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